


Axis Mundi

by AdAbolendam



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, End of Season 4, F/M, Friendship/Love, Just so we're clear this is not a happy fic, Mentions of attempted suicide, Spoilers through 4X20, dealing with the fallout
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 15:28:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10834083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdAbolendam/pseuds/AdAbolendam
Summary: They were dead-locked in a stalemate governed by fear of loss, but neither was willing to concede defeat.





	Axis Mundi

In days since she had returned from the Framework, May seemed to have acquired a second shadow. Whether she was in the gym rebuilding her atrophied muscles step by agonizing step, helping repair the base, or grabbing a rushed bite to eat in her limited down time, Phil Coulson always seemed to pop up at her elbow. Occasionally he engaged her in conversation (or rather, he talked, while she listened), filling her in on all she had missed. Mostly though, he seemed content to occupy himself with whatever task was at hand, so long as she was in his sight. 

It was nice at first. 

Although she had not realized it on a conscious level, for the good part of the last month, she had been completely cut off from human contact. Some basic human instinct inside of her craved the company of someone else’s proximity, having gone so long without it. Having someone by her side was comforting. It put her at ease. 

After four days though, his constant presence was becoming a little claustrophobic. 

May liked her autonomy. 

Outside the scope of her job, she liked not having to explain what she was going to do next to anyone. She appreciated those solitary moments by herself when she could let the world fade away and let her mind be at peace. Since she had come back, the only time she had to herself was when she was asleep or in the bathroom.

Come to think of it, this was pretty out-of-character for Coulson too. 

The man liked his space almost as much as she did. (Okay, maybe not almost. May realized she was a bit of an anomaly when it came to her penchant for isolation.) Still, he had never exhibited this brand of puppy-like neediness before. Coulson did not follow. He was a leader. 

What had changed?

Or, maybe the better question was, what did he expect from her?

May swivelled around in the middle of the corridor and Coulson almost crashed into her.

“Are you following me?” She asked.

She meant it to be teasing, to coax him into confessing what his game was. Her question came out a lot sharper than she intended. 

“What? No. You just said you were going to oversee the progress in the hanger bay and I thought I could help,” he explained in a rush.

May could almost visualize him pushing up those Buddy Holly glasses the schoolteacher version of himself wore in the Framework when he spoke. Something of that teacher remained with him when he came back. As much as it galled her, awkward-teacher Phil Coulson was insufferably cute. She immediately felt guilty for snapping at him.

“Phil,” she tried again, attempting a gentler tone. “I’m alright, you know. I’m not going to break. I’m keeping up with the PT and Simmons says I check out fine.”

“I don’t think you’re going to break,” he protested. “The Framework was hard on all of us. I just thought that maybe you could use some company.”

She smiled sadly.

“I’m not like Fitz,” she assured him. “I’ve come to terms with my actions.”

She could hardly blame him for being worried about her after seeing what had become of the poor scientist currently under psych eval in one of the containment module. He was on 24/7 suicide watch after a botched attempt to hang himself with a bedsheet. May might not have been in his situation, but she understood. She went down to visit him daily (or whenever she could sneak away from Coulson’s prying eyes.) 

She did not say much when she saw him. She just listened as he poured out his soul and tried to keep a neutral expression as he told her what a terrible person he was, how he should have been left to die in the Framework, how he was a waste of space and resources being kept alive. Once, she just held him as he curled up on her lap and wept until he fell asleep. 

Since Coulson did not have as much success getting Fitz to open up, he had kept his distance. But security footage would have told him everything he needed to know about the doctor’s state of mind. It was understandable that he would fear for her, having seen that. But it was not necessary. She was fine. 

“Are you sure about that?” Coulson asked. “No offense, but you don’t have the greatest personal history with forgiving yourself.”

May bristled slightly at the observation, but tamped down her temper. He was right. But that was in the past. 

“If the Framework proved anything, it was that Bahrain was not my fault,” she said. “There was nothing I could have done that would have made things better.”

“I’m fine, Phil,” she reiterated. She rested a hand on his arm and gave it a quick squeeze, then turned to walk away.

“I’m not.”

An imagined chill made the hairs on her arms stand up and all of the muscles in her shoulders tensed. Two words from him and she was on high alert. 

She pivoted on her heel to face him.

“What’s wrong?” She asked, searching his face for any clues that would indicate physical or psychological trauma.

“I… can we…?”

Coulson indicated an empty room to their left with a glance.

May nodded and followed him inside, closing the door behind him.

“Phil, what’s going on?” She repeated. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry, May. I didn’t know. You were gone for weeks and I didn’t know.”

The confession spilled from him like the flood waters from a dam. It was all bottled up inside of him, ready to break free at the slightest provocation. May chastised herself for not asking until now.

“It’s all my fault,” Coulson said. “Everything that happened to you and our team in the Framework. I should have realized right away that she wasn’t you. But they kept you and used your mind to create that horror show. People are dead. Fitz is broken. Simmons is…”

May nodded. Simmons was hanging on by a thread. Getting to Fitz was the motivation that powered her through the nightmare that was the Framework. When he returned, the burden of his self-hatred was so heavy, he had flat-out refused to see her. Simmons was barely coping. 

“And you,” Coulson continued. “You could hardly even _walk_ by the time you got out. If it had been any longer—

“But it wasn’t,” she interrupted. “Because you came and got me. I followed you out of there. I would have never escaped if you hadn’t taken that leap.”

“You shouldn’t have had to.”

His tone had the sharp edge of self-deprecation to it. 

“I’ve known you for half my life, May,” he said. “I thought I knew you better than anyone else. I know that you hate spiders, I know what your favourite band is, and what you are saving all your money for when you retire. But I couldn’t tell that for two weeks, you had been replaced by a _robot_.”

He spat the last word like a curse he could not keep in his mouth.

“I saw her, Phil,” she told him. “The LMD that replaced me. She could have fooled me too. And if she had all of my memories…”

“That’s just it,” Coulson said. “When I look back on it, there are a million things that should have tipped me off. I went over it a dozen times in my head. When it comes down to it, there’s only one conclusion: I didn’t _want_ to see it. I wanted to believe she was you.”

May’s lips parted and she crossed her arms.

_What the hell did_ that _mean?_

“Why would you want to believe she was me?” She asked. 

Coulson’s hands opened and closed into fists as he hesitated. 

“Because she loved me,” he said at last.

The silence in the room was replaced by the dull roar as all of the blood left May’s limbs and rushed to her head. Every nerve in her body was firing and sparking, telling her to run or punch something. Like that fucking LMD. If the damn thing had not been incinerated, she would have hit it until her knuckles bled. 

“What?” She managed. “What do you mean ‘she loved’ you? It was a goddamn machine, Coulson. It couldn’t love anything!”

She could tell from his stunned silence that this was the wrong reaction, but she didn’t care. AIDA and that fucking psychotic scientist had violated her in every way possible. But she could not have imagined that they would have gone this far. They had taken the deepest, most sacred parts of her, and used it to manipulate the one person she trusted more than anyone else. 

“What did she say to you?” May demanded. “What did she do?”

“It wasn’t any particular thing,” Coulson said, raising his hands in a gesture of placation. Sometime in the last five seconds, he had switched gears. He had gone from a supplicating friend to an agent trying to diffuse a ticking bomb. 

May took a deep breath and tried to still the frantic rhythm of her heart. It was not working. She still wanted someone to bleed for this.

“What was it then?”

Coulson swallowed. 

“She was like you,” he started. “Just, more interested.”

“Then how do you know…?” May couldn’t complete the thought. Everything about the situation made her sick.

“I didn’t,” Coulson admitted with a shrug. “Until she kissed me.”

The warm fire of righteous anger evaporated and was replaced by a vacuum that ached even more. She kissed him. That _thing_ wearing her face kissed Phil. And he thought it was her. 

“I should have known it wasn’t you,” Coulson repeated. 

May barely heard him. 

She was numb. 

AIDA and Radcliffe had robbed her of everything, body and mind. And now they had they had twisted and warped the most precious thing in her life. It took years for him to trust her again. How could they ever come back from this? 

“But it became pretty obvious what her intentions were when she pulled a gun on me two minutes later,” Coulson said.

Her head snapped up.

“What?”

“She was using me to get the Darkhold,” Coulson said. “That’s all she was programmed to do. It was all a ruse.”

May’s eyes fluttered shut for the briefest of moments and she had to bite her tongue to stop herself from contradicting him.

“And all that time, you were alone,” he continued. “You were being tortured and I didn’t even realize you were gone. I’m so sorry, Melinda. It was self-indulgent and so stupid of me.”

“Phil—

“That’s why I’ve wanted to keep you close.”

His chest began to rise and fall rapidly and his words fell out in rapid-fire bursts. May’s palms prickled, going slick with sweat. If she did not know better, she would think he was having a panic attack.

“When I found out you were gone, I thought you were dead. I thought I had let you die. And even in the Framework, I didn’t know who you were, but I knew… I can’t lose you again, May. I can’t. I—I can’t.”

Coulson never lost his composure with an audience. That stiff-upper-lip secret agent mentality had been indoctrinated in them both at such a young age that she assumed they had both lost the ability to be vulnerable in front of anyone else, especially a fellow agent. 

His shaking hands and unshed tears tore at her heart.

She grabbed his elbow and pulled him close. He went limp in her arms and she felt the damp heat from his mouth pressed against the fabric that covered her shoulder. Hot gasps of air raised goose bumps on her skin as he cried in silent open-mouthed screams into her flesh. 

The muscles in her legs, still weak from almost a month of disuse, could not support them both. Her knees buckled and they crumpled to the floor, but her grip on him did not falter. She held him as his sobs turned to gasps, raking her fingers through the fine hair on the back of his scalp. 

Every part of her hurt. 

For him. For what her robotic doppelganger had put him through. For what had been done to her. 

For how much he loved her. 

For what that love had cost him.

“I’m sorry, Phil,” she said, when his breathing had evened out. Coulson withdrew, red-faced, but with clear eyes. 

“What are you sorry for?” he asked. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

It was at times like these when she wished actions were enough to articulate her intent. But sometimes gestures were not enough. 

“I’m sorry that it took me being replaced by a robot to make you believe that I—I care for you.”

She could not make herself say that word. Maybe there was a reason he did not think it was possible for her to love him. 

“Phil, I can’t lose you either,” May admitted. “When you died… I always thought it would be me to go first. It was supposed to be me to go first. That was my job. To protect you. I wasn’t there and… it should have been me.”

Coulson shook his head, lips parted in a silent protest of disbelief.

“Is that why you joined the team?” He asked. “When Fury asked you?”

“I never lied about that,” May replied defiantly. “I told you I did it to protect you. We were partners. I was supposed to die before I let anything happen to you. That was the deal.”

“When the hell did we make that deal?” Coulson demanded. “I think I would remember that.”

“It was understood,” May insisted.

“Not by me!”

“I can’t lose you, Phil,” she reiterated. “I won’t.”

Coulson leaned back, propping himself up with his prosthetic hand. He looked at her, but his mind was miles away, processing everything in a new light. 

“Is that why you never said anything about… how you felt?” He asked. 

May nodded. 

It was as close to the truth as she could get, anyway. She could not lose him. Not to death, or distance, or just because she managed to screw up the two of them like she had with every relationship. He was more than a friend or a partner, or even a lover. He was the axis on which her world turned. Without him, she would fly off into the cosmos. 

It just never occurred to her that anyone would feel the same way about her, much less Phil. He was always so headstrong and sure of himself. She did not even imagine that it was her that kept him grounded. 

His hand was warm against her cool fingers when he reached over and squeezed them. She could not look at him. She could not stand to see the look of sympathetic pity in his eyes.

“Melinda,” he said. 

When she found the courage to glance upward, she only saw understanding. 

As close as they were, this may have been the first time they truly realized where they stood with one another. They were dead-locked in a stalemate governed by fear of loss, but neither was willing to concede defeat. 

Feeling the gentle tug on her arm, May allowed herself to be pulled into his arms. She closed her eyes and rested her head on his chest. Beneath her cheek she could feel the steady beat of the heart that had been torn to shreds and stitched back together with technology that should not have existed. Another blatant reminder of how tenuous a threat this existence was. 

One wrong move, that’s all it would take. One bullet. One explosion. One wrong turn.

And she would never again feel the weight of his arms as they held her close. Never feel the warmth of his lips as he kissed her forehead. Or temple. Or the corner of her mouth. 

He was here now though. 

So close and alive beneath her touch. 

She kissed him back. On his brow, on the laugh lines near his eye, his jaw, everywhere but his lips. That was a line she could not come back from. 

May did not know how long they sat there on the floor, tangled in tight knot. With the weight of everything that had gone unspoken lifted from her, she felt tired. He brushed her hair with his fingers and she could have fallen asleep right there, with her head in his shoulder and their entwined fingers pressed to her lips. 

“What do we do now, May?” He whispered. 

She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping to block out reality for just a few minutes more. 

“What we’ve always done,” she said at last. “We do our job.”

He pulled back from her and looked her in the eye.

“I do _not_ want you dying for me, May.”

She could only give him a sad smile in return. There was nothing she could say that he would accept. She would do what she thought was right. She would do what she had always done. 

Coulson sighed. 

“Well, there is one solution to this,” he said. 

“We both live forever?” She suggested sarcastically.

“Or,” he contradicted. “We could retire.”

Her answering smile had a little more mirth in it this time. They both knew the chances of them sailing off into the sunset and being happy together were slim to none. They would be clawing at each other’s throats out of sheer boredom after a week. 

“Well, it was a thought,” he acquiesced.

May snorted and Coulson cracked a grin.

“Maybe one day,” she conceded. 

“And until then?” He asked.

“I’ve got your back,” she said. “Always.”

She rocked back on her heels and pulled him to his feet with a yank of her hand. Before they could part and go their separate ways, he wrapped his arms around her one last time. 

“I love you,” he whispered in her ear. 

He stepped back and squeezed her hand.

May nodded and focused on keeping her eyes open so the tears would not fall. 

Coulson closed the door and left her behind.

“I love you too,” she replied.


End file.
